Just Show Me The Money, Money
by RunsfromReality
Summary: She's confused about how, but there's no confusing what – Bella's been vamped. Her new family are 1st-class drug dealers in a turf war with The Pack. A new life status, a new family, and a happy ending? You'd have to be high to think it's gonna be easy!
1. Chapter 1:  Introduction

**Intro**

The swish of the car's tires through the light rain falling into the parking lot served as a reminder to her to bring a laptop sleeve next time. She hunched over her poor machine, hustling through the tightly parked cars to the back corner. Old Blue was faithfully wedged between the dumpster and the building wall, the last available spot during the morning rush. Okay, so it wasn't even technically a spot, but CafeTree's owners were generally too lazy and too swamped to bother calling anyone for a tow. At midnight, the coffee shop was still packed, but her hands were cramping and it was time to call it quits.

She angled her body carefully away from the side of the dumpster on her way to the driver's side door, contorting her body as far from the implied stench as possible while still shielding the laptop from the rain. Fumbling to get her keys out of her bag with her body at such an awkward angle, she tilted too far and lost the power cable off the top of the computer. It clunked down to the concrete, bouncing under the dumpster and into the muck.

Reaching for it was the last thing she remembered . . .

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><p><strong>More to come ... I learned my lesson with Distilling Down and have the next chapter ready to go!<strong> Many thanks to Project Team Beta for their help and feedback.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

A wrist at an awkward angle greeted her vision when she opened her eyes, a problem fixed easily enough. She straightened it without thinking, stretching it out against the smooth tile until her palm lay flat against the blue-and-white pattern. She drummed her fingers reflexively, a typist's idle habit, checking for sensation and finding there was none. The fingers moved, the tile thrummed, and nothing registered outside of what her eyes told her was happening.

"Ah, she's awake," chirped a female voice to her left.

"In a manner of speaking," a male voice deadpanned from her left, following his statement with a long sigh. "Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy."

"He feels very bad about it," chirped the woman. Young girl? The voice was high, and she wasn't sure how much more "awake" she wanted to show herself to be at the moment.

"I'm sure he does," said the deadpan voice in reply. "Dumpster diving. What was he thinking?"

"He wasn't thinking. _Obviously._" A husky female voice joined the chorus, the sarcastic tones adding nothing good to the building dum-dum-dum-dum in her brain. Maybe now would be a good time to sit up.

Or not. According to her eyes, she was pushing up from her wrist. Gravity seemed a bit strong, though, because nothing was happening here. Wherever _here_ was. Expanding her gaze past the tile surrounding her wrist was proving difficult. The tile stretched on briefly to a brown wood border strip, and then there was … nothing, really. A thick blackness lay outside the square tile corners, not so much dark as deliberately unlit.

"I do believe she is trying to get up," observed her deadpan voice, tinged with an undercurrent of southern bemusement. "Shall we stay and watch?"

"Boring," chimed Ms. Sarcasm. "We'll have to deal with her soon enough. Why not eat first?"

A general murmur of assent seemed to imply a greater audience than just the speakers. She tried to make them out, to sit up, to see beyond the patterned tiles, and just when she thought maybe there was progress, that maybe she could move, the lights went out as the high voice chirped, "Nighty-night, don't let the bed bugs bite!"

"Or Edward," came the deadpan, followed by laughter and the distinctive snick-click of a lock.

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><p><strong>Many thanks to Project Team Beta for edits, and special thanks and appreciation to all who read! I love to see traffic, reviews, and feedback.<strong>


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

A hand covered hers briefly, the powdering on the gloves standing out sharply to her freshly opened eyes. Gaps. There were definitely gaps. She drummed her fingers on the tile as the hand moved up and out of her field of vision, which seemed to be the closest her reflexes would let her get to reaching for those vanishing gloves.

_Listen, muscles, _she said to herself, _I have got a problem here and you are not helping. _They didn't bother answering, just as they hadn't … earlier … when she was trying to get up in the dark.

Voices murmured behind her, and she gave up on her muscles to zero in. There were tones of deadpan, high chirps, and a swishing side current of sarcasm. These did not interest her so much; their words were indistinct, their voices known oddities. Instead, she strained to focus on the even tones coming from a new source, an older man, and the respondent deep bass.

"Reflexes seem normal, from what I can tell," said the man's voice. "Obviously we'll know more later. It's messy, but not irreparable."

"Well, the car's irreparable," thumped the bass. _Old Blue, rest in peace_, she thought automatically, and then wondered where that thought had come from. Her mind seemed oddly empty, come to think of it. She probed her awareness and went back to her original assessment: gaps. Really, really big gaps.

There was a hallway, sun slanting through the windows. Roses were just outside. Then a big blue lake … the ocean? She felt bigger lying next to it, but fuzzy, as though the memory were coming through a fog. She saw Old Blue when it was new and Old Blue when it was old, in the rain, and she was bending over to pick something up. Then she just saw the tile, and her hand.

Gaps, right. More like islands in a sea of nothing doing. This was going to be a problem the next time she was standing at the ATM. _If your PIN number's your birthday but you don't remember your birthday, who helps you?_

"So the plan is to just keep her here on my work table until when, exactly?" Ms. Sarcasm had interrupted. There was an awkward pause, and she realized her fingers were rolling on the tile again. Ms. Sarcasm asked petulantly, "How sentient is that thing, anyway?"

There was a long sigh from Mr. Even Tone. "We'll ask her when her throat heals, Rosalie. Until then it's just guesswork and speculation. Hit the lights, Alice, we're through here."

She tried to tell Alice to wait, that she didn't like the dark, but it closed in on her quickly before she could make a sound. Questions rattled around in her brain as she tried to slot this experience in between her sparse memories. Who were these people, and what was wrong with her throat? Why didn't anything work properly, and why couldn't she remember?

Without the light, she couldn't see to tell if her fingers drummed along with her thoughts. There was no feeling anywhere. It was like her consciousness simply floated free, with no anchoring body to hold it down to the tile. _I think, therefore I am, _she intoned, appreciating the philosophical surety even as the darkness took over.

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><p><strong>Thanks for reading ... and reviewing! <strong>Also, my sincere thanks to the team at Project Team Beta for their editing!


	4. Chapter 4

**My thanks to PTB, and apologies to SMeyer.**

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><p><strong>Chapter 4<strong>

The next time the light flicked on, she was waiting for it. She held her hand still as she heard the voices approach, not wanting to be too "sentient" and get left alone in the dark again.

She wasn't fast enough to see them, and they always just seemed to be right outside her field of vision. The exception was a lone hand that trailed lightly over hers, the long, thin fingers tracing hers for a brief moment before gloved hands waved it on and picked up her hand.

_Oh, that's what's wrong, _she thought flatly, before it occurred to her that flat wasn't an appropriate emotional reaction to her arm. Had she just not been looking before, or had she not wanted to see?

About a hand-span down from her wrist, the bruising was impressive. Purples, greens, and yellows vied for her attention. They formed a strong handprint where someone had clearly not been interested in letting go. Up from there, it looked like she'd been bitten … maybe chewed would be a better description. Something had held her and chewed her.

She couldn't see the end of her arm, and her head didn't want to turn. Was it still muscle paralysis, or was there something else her mind didn't want her to see? The pieces she was assembling were not adding up to a pretty picture. _Oh, goody, a math story problem …_

_A. No feeling anywhere._

_B. Being stored on a work table by disembodied voices._

_C. Throat needs to heal._

_D. Chew marks on arm._

_E. Can't remember anything._

_Let A = paralyzation. If B = morgue/hospital, let C + D = surprise attack. If A, C, and D = Bad things, what was the value of E? _She paused as the image of a report card full of B's flashed before her eyes. Was math not her strong suit?

The mental question was enough to jerk her focus back to the situation at hand. In hand. Her hand. Arm. Whatever. They were talking about her.

Ms. Sarcasm, Rosalie, must have asked something, because Mr. Even Tone was responding with a mini-lecture. "You can see the regeneration here and here on the arm," he said, a ballpoint pen in the hand not holding hers doing the pointing. She could only see the back of her forearm, not the front where he was indicating. The back just looked discolored and mauled. _Boring, _she thought, having already adjusted to this reality.

"Based on the present rate of cellular healing, it might be a week to ten days before she can be moved. You'll just have to take your work somewhere else in the meantime," her doctor – if he was actually a doctor – said evenly. She could see his white lab coat standing over by with her elbow, just at the edge of where her head wouldn't turn to look and Ms. Sarcasm was huffing.

"It's an imposition, Carlisle. Isn't there anything you can do? I do not want this thing in my garden unless it is one of Emmett's fertilization projects," Rosalie snapped. _Garden? But where are the plants? I don't see any plants. Maybe there are flowers?_

She sniffed, the sound echoing loud in her ears. There weren't any flowers.

"That thing can **not**be breathing," said Rosalie, startled. "I'm looking at its lung!"

She didn't care to dwell on that particular observation. She focused on the smells. They were almost overpowering. Just one sniff had brought in a wealth of information and nuance she couldn't handle. There was soil here, rich deep loam fertilized with manure and ashes. She picked out six different cows, pine, cottonwood, and even a stray branch of eucalyptus.

She discovered she hated the smell of eucalyptus.

The worst, though, was a coppery tang that hammered through everything. Tart, crisp, and cutting, it seemed to be firing circuits in her brain she'd never known were there.

Somewhere there was a lot of blood sitting around, and it was getting old fast. The smell was vile and tantalizing all at the same time. It was ridiculously close, like it was right under her nose. Now if she could just put her finger on where that was coming from …

_If A, C, and D = Bad things …_

She wasn't _that_ bad at math. The bolt of panic shook her free from her paralysis enough to roll her eyes upward into the very startled faces of a stunning blond woman and the doctor by her side. "Ah, well, that answers a part of the sentience question," said the doctor. He dropped down to her level and looked her in the eye. "My name is Carlisle. I'm your doctor."

There was a snort from above as Rosalie expressed her opinion of his introduction, stepping away from the table and vanishing into the dark. He continued, relatively unfazed. "That was Rosalie, a member of my … family. We mean you no harm, and I assure you that you will eventually recover from this experience."

The silence stretched on as her brain did frantic cartwheels. What experience was she supposed to be recovering from? Gaps, gaps, gaps everywhere were short-circuiting the calculations.

"Carlisle," Rosalie said at last, her disembodied exasperation settling down from on high to blanket both members of the non-conversation in icy disdain. "What are you expecting her to say? Half her throat's still missing. Vocalization is not happening here."

"Rosalie," he replied, not breaking eye contact, "there is no reason to continue creating panic by referencing injuries that are simply not an issue."

"Oh, right," Rosalie snapped, not the least bit contrite. "How thoughtless of me."

Carlisle stared on, unblinking. Gradually, she realized she wasn't blinking either. Or breathing, really. She was just utterly, utterly still as her mind raged around the few small facts rattling around in her skull. Carlisle's cool eyes had the most uniquely colored golden irises she'd ever seen, and she was dimly aware she was using his looks as a distraction from focusing on his words. Yet his fine eyelashes intrigued her, as did the short lock of blond hair that had broken from his carefully combed hair to fall forward onto his forehead.

She went to touch it, and he was gone, her arm falling from his grasp to flop lifelessly against the tiled tabletop even as her hand curled in a futile half-grasp.

"Remarkable reflexes," he said, at a distance. "Rosalie, hit the lights, would you?"

"Let Edward do it," said Rosalie. "He's closer."

Across the room, there was a sigh, a click, and then darkness was back, taking over her mind and setting it free from her scattered, screaming thoughts.

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><p><strong>Thanks for reading and reviewing! Next up … we meet The Pack.<strong>


	5. Chapter 5

**Thanks to PTB; apologies, as always, to SMeyer.**

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><p><strong>Chapter 5<strong>

The distinctive _snick-click_ of the lock snapped her floating consciousness back down to her body. As the light above her flickered on, her swirling thoughts pooled into her brain, forming tentative sentences. _What will we learn today? What's going on? _Her brain seemed excited, like a child returning to school after a dull vacation.

She was still running a systems check (_All systems no go, captain_) when she realized something was different. The footsteps circling the room seemed hesitant, and there were various clinks and clangs as things were picked up and put down. Her regular guests were silent, choosing to surprise her with their voices after they had her surrounded. This was different…

Focusing on keeping the action small, she sniffed tentatively. She'd avoided taking a full-on whiff of anything since the first time, but alarm bells were sounding at the edge of her senses and she needed to know what was going on _now_. The sensation of the air flowing into her nose felt funny, like inhaling an old French feather duster, and she held herself very still to avoid the sneeze that threatened at the back of her throat.

She smelled dirt and ashes, the coppery tang of her blood still powerful but not as heavy-handed as before. The freshest smell was rain, and the distinctive odor of wet dog. Yet the animals padding around the room had just two legs, and they were nowhere near as graceful as the mutts they smelled like as they made their way toward her.

The footfalls were giving her an impression of the surrounding space she'd lacked before. She was somewhere very big, but with a low ceiling. Recalling Rosalie's words about the garden, she mentally filled in the details of a greenhouse, imagining rows of planters stretching out around her. It was too bad there weren't flowers – the image of herself lying in the middle of a field of delicately waving blossoms that was filling her brain made her happy.

"Check the back. The seeds have to be in here somewhere." The voice was low and husky, a whisper that carried easily to her hyper-vigilant ears. Footsteps turned toward her, pinning her present location at "the back", wherever that was. _A worktable in the back of an empty garden, _she thought. _I wonder if my insurance will cover that?_

A sharp intake of breath echoed through the air behind her head. She almost turned to look, but then thought better of it. These weren't her voices. Whoever was coming, it wasn't her doctor.

The second pair of footsteps quick marched over to join the first. "What is that?" said a low whisper, the voice higher than the first, frightened.

"It's a body, you ignorant asshole. Like you've never seen one before. Are the seeds here?" The first voice was still whispering, but there was no mistaking the tone of command.

"I'm not going in there. You said she was an herbalist, not a mortician."

"She is, she is. Or she was. Doesn't matter. Get the seeds!" The voice was louder, insistent, and irritated.

"No way."

"You are just fucking useless," muttered Mr. In-Charge. "Watch the door." She assumed it was his footsteps that came closer, rummaging through drawers and boxes outside her field of vision, while Mr. Scaredy-Cat walked quickly back toward the front.

When a drawer directly beneath her jerked open, it was all she could do to stay still. She could feel her fingers itching to drum the tabletop, to communicate something to the stranger invading her space. She sniffed surreptitiously, getting a nose full of wet dog, cold rain, and leather.

The leather turned out to be a beautiful bomber jacket, visible as the intruder worked his way around the table and into her field of vision drawer by drawer. It was weathered, with a small tear at the elbow. Dark gloves covered the hands working the drawers, but she could appreciate the smooth, tan skin at the wrists where small gaps flickered open and shut.

He was efficient in his search, moving rapidly up and down. Her worktable must be full of drawers, and as it rolled slightly in response to a swiftly shut drawer, she realized it had casters as well.

He must have seen something he wanted in a bottom drawer, because he crouched suddenly, giving her a view of broad shoulders and dark hair. She liked dark hair, and the quick flash of his jaw as he'd dropped was not unattractive. Only the top of his head was visible to her as he rummaged through the drawer, which was a pity, because she really wanted to see his neck.

_Well, that's weird. Since when do you like necks? Aren't you a leg girl? _Her consciousness challenged her, puzzled at the neck thing. What she liked was legs, nice long legs with good muscles and thick veins she could sink her teeth into and –

A sound of disgust came out of her throat, involuntarily triggered by the end of her mental picture. Dark brown eyes locked into hers, whites showing all the way around. Shock was evident beneath thick black eyebrows that were reaching for the stars. "You can't be alive," whispered Mr. In-Charge, not sounding very sure about that at all.

She wanted to argue, but the lights went out.

When they flickered back on a moment later, Rosalie was standing in front of Mr. In-Charge, eying him slowly up and down. He would have probably rather been elsewhere, but a bear of a man was standing just behind him, looking like a Russian mobster waiting on a joyride to start.

"Jacob Black," Rosalie stated flatly, "You are a stupid, stupid dog."

"Where's Paul?" Jacob asked, his tone even.

"Somewhere in the garden, I imagine," said Rosalie, as if Paul had just wandered off somewhere and would be back soon. "Did you find what you came for?"

"Who says I came for anything? I was just stopping by for a visit." Jacob's tone was light, but she could see his fingers shaking slightly. "You were out and I wanted to leave a note. Had to find myself a pen and paper, that's all." He shrugged nonchalantly, his hand moving his jacket higher and coming to rest on a gun. _Sneaky, sneaky, _she thought. He hadn't been looking for paper at all.

"Really?" said Rosalie, crossing her arms. "Why don't I believe you?" Evidently his hand wasn't visible to her, and the bear-man was too close to be looking down. A waist-high view could come in handy sometimes.

The lights flickered again, and Jacob seemed to take it as a kind of signal. He went for his gun, stopping only because she already had his hand. "Holy fuck!" he yelled, jumping back. She went with him, unable to remember the mechanism for letting go of things. She hadn't consciously grabbed him, couldn't have told you how she'd made the muscles work, and lurching forward to keep up with his backward momentum she rather regretted it. Though she couldn't feel it, gravity was a known principle not likely to make her any exceptions.

She left the table behind in favor of the floor, her shoulder hitting hard. She heard rather than felt the impact and the accompanying slide as she and Jacob both headed for the far wall. She suspected he was being helped along by the bear man, though no obvious hand had gone out.

When they thumped into the wall shelves, Jacob had one aim. "Get this corpse off me!" His voice was shrill as he frantically tried to peel her clenched fingers off his wrist. She watched his panicked scrabbling, not entirely sure what she was supposed to be doing herself. _Muscles? _ _Are we supposed to try to move something?_

By way of response, her arm just flopped lifelessly as he spun his wrist and kept picking at her fingers. Dimly, she was aware that this all should have been painful, that things had to be broken. She was more interested in the faded bruises and shallow scratches where her bite marks had been. The changes were truly fascinating, just as Carlisle had described. Jacob's terror at her grasp was like a sideshow to the wonder that was her body's own repair job.

When he hiked up a booted foot to kick at her shoulder, she snapped back to the problem at hand. He had very big feet, and his left shoe seemed to be coming at her in slow motion. She had no intention of letting it land and could tell that her body was planning something.

She never got a chance to find out what. Long arms came from nowhere to twist Jacob's kicking leg, the knee making a wicked pop as things went too far. His scream of agony was cut short by a backhand to the face, slamming his skull into the wall and knocking him out.

"Edward," chided Rosalie. "We're not supposed to lay a hand on members of the Pack." _Oops, _she thought, letting go of Jacob's wrist. The air felt cold in comparison to Jacob's warm skin against her palm. Rosalie noticed the move. "Not you, Thing 1. You didn't know any better."

She felt oddly pleased to be directly addressed. _I am Thing 1, grabber of wrists, _she thought, filing that into an otherwise empty file labeled "Identity." Progress!

The lights flickered out again. "Now what?" muttered Rosalie, and from her place on the floor she had a sensation of multiple parties leaving. There was a distant snick-click as the lock slid home, and then she was alone. At least, she thought she was alone.

But not really alone. Not truly.

She did have the unconscious thing called Jacob Black within reach …

She sniffed the air tentatively. She smelled wet dog, and fresh blood. The combination was a delicious tickle in her nostrils, and she breathed in deeply. Such a nice tickle …

She couldn't have explained how she came to be laying in his lap, nuzzling his hip. It was the same set of mystery mechanics that let her grab wrists and drum fingers, yet not remember how to let go of moving objects.

But none of that mattered. Up close, Jacob smelled more delicious than ever, and her nose tucked itself into the groove of muscle that ran just above his pelvis. _Damn, baby, you've been working out! _ She thought, giggling. His skin was so warm that cuddling into it just seemed like the natural thing to do.

And even though really, truly, she could have sworn she _**was **_a leg girl, nibbling that warm bit of flesh felt pretty good, too. He was just so delicious, this Jacob Black, that she couldn't help herself. His skin beneath her teeth was firm and smooth, pressing back against her teeth as she nibbled slightly lower. A vein pulsed gently beneath the skin, the vibration sinking into her senses and prompting her teeth to dig in just a little deeper into his flesh.

The blood that burst forth shocked her.

It was hot … and wet … and it tasted like _**Christmas**_ in her mouth.

She drank deeply, ignoring the part of her brain that was recoiling in disgust and just going with the instincts that screamed out for more, more, more.

After a long time, she pulled back and licked her lips, feeling strangely satisfied. She nuzzled back into Jacob's hip, cuddling the cooling flesh against her cheek and closing her eyes.

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><p><strong>Thanks for reading and reviewing!<strong>


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